Upon my arrival in Stockholm I was picked up by one of the Swedish students, who had also picked up the key for my room at the residence hall. This was very comforting and made the whole arrival situation a lot less complicated and smooth. He also had practical informations about where to meet on the first day of school and how to get there as well as how to get settled in terms of getting a cell phone number and a travel card for the public transportation.

Unfortunately I arrived a couple of days later than the instroduction day, which is why I could take part.

On the first day at school we were introduced to the student health centre. Here we had some testing for MRSA to make sure that we were not carriers. We were informed that we could go to the student health centre if we experience any physical or phychological problems related to the work at school. Fortunately this never was anything we needed.

About three month prior to leaving for Stockholm i applyed for a room in a student residence hall to UAC. About one and a half before I was offered a room, which I readily accepted. The standard of the room was quite nice, I didn't use to much energy on furnishing and equipping the room as my stay was quite short. Yet everything I needed was there, the rent was very cheap and everything was functionable.

Being on the final years of my dental education at my home university, I thought it would be of great value to broaden my horizon and experience the dental traditions and the learning environment at another university. That aside I have always been a keen traveller and enjoyed putting myself in new places and situations, challenging my own abilities to adjust and learn new ways and in that process hoping to become a more nuanced human being.

My reasons for choosing KI were many, but most importantly I wanted to find a university with a high academic and educational standard and the possibility for a lot of clinical training. I felt that KI met these criteria better than my other options which was partly why the final choise came down to KI. Furthermore, I had never been to Stockholm beforea and thought i would be exciting and fellow students at my home university that were former exchange student at KI confirmed these asumptions and had only great recommondations of KI and Stockholm.

I lot of the information that I gathered about the exchange program I had to find on my own, mostly by researching the KI-website for old schedules and etc. The preparation that we had to make before leaving were getting different print-outs of passed exams and besides that we had to get conformation of good standing from the head dentist of the three departments of cariology and endodontics, prosthodontics and periodontics.

I speak Danish so the communication wasnt a big issue. We didn't participate in any courses but quite fast we learned to communicate with everybody and swedish and interscandinivian.

During the three and a half months at KI, I followed some theoretical courses and had a lot of clinical training were we sat treating patients under supervision. We followed the lectures in Swedish, which was no problem as I'm Danish. The teoretical standard was great and at the same time teaching had a good clinical relevance, which a liked a lot.

The teacher's were nice and friendly and always very helpful and ready to give competent guidance and assistance when needed.

Compared to my own university the lectures seemed to be more focused on clinical cases and informations that would be relevant in a clinical context. We often spend a lot of time analysing articles and listening to the results of various experiments.

The clinical teaching at my home university as arranged in the way that each group of students has their own teacher at the same clinical rotation every week. This gives some advantages, because there might be a better continuity, However sometimes the teacher might be sick or the treatment that you have to make is not excactly your teacher's specialty. In that way i think i prefer the swedish model even though is probably more expensive. It's nice always beeing able to consult a specialist and when there are more teacher's available your can choose the one that your feel more comfortable with. In our system you are sometimes stuck with a teacher that you don't get along with, which can be quite a drag over a longer period.

In the clinic many thing were done like we do them at home, but often there were also differences which often were very enlightening and great to learn. It's nice to get to see different ways of attacking the same problem.